In other words, whew! Something obviously very bad will be put off. And those relieved Democrats won’t have to start running for cover; they were just handed it.

Monday

Makeover for conservatism

“Chicks on the Right” are two professional, working central Indiana mothers – Amy Jo Clark and Miriam Weaver – who think they can help spur the makeover the desperately needed conservative movement in this country. It needs rescued, they say, from tired, old establishment candidates such as John McCain and Mitt Romney who do not represent the growing legion of new, mostly younger conservatives.

And what kind of conservative is this new breed? Perhaps something like Clark and Weaver. They “want to hurl” at people who swoon over President Obama like a rock star. They blast Democrats, who’ve run the country into the ground spending money we don’t have. But they’re OK with the morning-after pill, even abortions up to five weeks of pregnancy. And they couldn’t care less if gay people get married.

Tuesday

The state and religion

You know of the looming debate in the General Assembly. If legislators approve a resolution on it in the next session, the question of whether Indiana’s gay-marriage ban should go into the state constitution will be put to voters in a referendum.

But there’s a law already on the books you might not have noticed, slipped quietly into the Indiana Code by lawmakers last session. According to IC 31-11-11-7, set to take effect July 1, 2014, “A person who knowingly solemnizes a marriage of individuals who are prohibited from marrying by IC 31-11-1 commits a Class B misdemeanor.”

Even those sympathetic to Indian’s efforts to resist the gay-marriage tide should be a little uncomfortable with a provision that could be seen as a huge intrusion by the state into religious matters that are none of its business.

Wednesday

Helping out the president

The mainstream media have come under fire lately, especially from commentators on the right, for their overly kind treatment of the Obama administration. Multiple controversies touching the president and his team are skipped over lightly. Just this week a headline on a story linked to by numerous conservative blogs said, “MSM protect Hillary from scandal.”

We act as if this unseemly coziness is something new, as if the press has somehow veered off its proper course. But consider a little historical perspective. Ray Begovich, Franklin College journalism professor, has found footage of FDR being pushed in his wheelchair, depicting a secret hidden from the public until his death. Stricken with polio, he was unable to walk without leg braces or assistance. Most news photographers cooperated in concealing the disability.

Thursday

Evidence is in: Big doesn't work

Has Big Government finally imploded? That question is asked by Daniel Henninger of The Wall Street Journal, and he makes a persuasive case that it indeed has, naming July 3, 2013, as the official day of collapse. That’s the day a deputy assistant Treasury secretary announced in a blog post that the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) employer mandate would be delayed one year because of the “complexity of the requirements.”

Even those who support the ACA’s goals, he writes, must sense that “maybe the law’s theorists missed a signal from life outside the castle walls. While they troweled brick after brick into a 2,000-page law, the rest of the world was reshaping itself into smaller, more nimble units whose defining metaphor is the 140-character Twitter message.”